The Battle of the Somme (1916)

Directed by

Geoffrey H. Malins

Genre

documentary film, silent film, propaganda film

Country

United Kingdom

Runtime

1h 14m

Rating

6.5 of 10 from 21 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This silent film shows the British army preparing for and fighting the early days of the Battle of the Somme. It includes footage of soldiers marching, firing artillery, and being treated for wounds, as well as scenes of the dead.

historicalsombergrittyslow-pacedrawobservationalausterestark

What happens

The Battle of the Somme (US title, Kitchener's Great Army in the Battle of the Somme), is a 1916 British documentary and propaganda war film, shot by two official cinematographers, Geoffrey Malins and John McDowell. The film depicts the British Expeditionary Force during the preliminaries and early days of the Battle of the Somme (1 July – 18 November 1916). The film premièred in London on 10 August 1916 and was released generally on 21 August. The film shows trench warfare, marching infantry, artillery firing on German positions, British troops waiting to attack on 1 July, the treatment of wounded British and German soldiers, British and German dead and captured German equipment and positions. A scene during which British troops crouch in a ditch then "go over the top" was staged for the camera behind the lines. The film was a great success, watched by about 20 million people in Britain in the first six weeks of exhibition and distributed in eighteen countries. A second film, covering a later phase of the battle, was released in 1917 as The Battle of the Ancre and the Advance of the Tanks. In 1920, the film was preserved in the film archive of the Imperial War Museum. In 2005, it was inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register, digitally restored and was released on DVD in 2008. "The Battle of the Somme" is significant as an early example of film propaganda, a historical record of the battle and as a popular source of footage illustrating the First World War. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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